Back on Track(s)

Well EZArchive v.3.0 is finally up and running, so stay tuned for another edition of the Monday Mixtape! *sigh* Never mind.

Yes, We Have No Bananas Today

EZArchive has moved to a new version, requiring users to re-host all stored files. What this means for you: no mp3 downloads from *bitter defeat* until the management figures out the stupid new interface and finds a way to get to the new file locations. So hold fast and steady, y'all... free music will be back up ASAP, assuming EZArchive hasn't completely screwed the pooch.

Your Insipid "Monday" Joke Here

Vacation in San Francisco (which included trips to Amoeba records on both sides of the bay and Yo La Tengo at the Fillmore) meant no Monday Mixtape this week.

More Halloween-themed mayhem to come, I'm sure, but here's a lovely track to hold you over until next week.

My Bloody Valentine covering (maybe) my favorite Wire song.

My Bloody Valentine - "Map Ref 41N 93W"

[Buy the Whore: Tribute to Wire compilation]

Monday Mixtape: The Halloween Edition

Welcome to a special Halloween edition of the Monday Mixtape! Sure, the day before Halloween proper is a Monday, but this gives you plenty of time to get in the mood/download and create your own holiday mix. Besides, I'll probably just supply you with more hellish mayhem on the 30th.

So here you go. Try not to pee your pants.

Harry Manfredini - Friday the 13th theme
"Dying tickles."
Ministry - "Every Day Is Halloween"
John Carpenter - Halloween theme
AC/DC - "Hells Bells"
Mötley Crüe - "Shout at the Devil"
B-52s - "Devil in My Car"
"I heard a Frankenstein lives there!"
Rockwell - "Somebody's Watching Me"
Sprites - "George Romero"
Nine Inch Nails - "Dead Souls" (Joy Division cover)
Dead Moon - "Dead Moon Night"
Robert Cobert - Dark Shadows theme
The Fall - "Live at the Witch Trials" (intro)
Slayer - "Angel of Death"
Charles Bernstein - A Nightmare on Elm Street theme
Angelo Badalamenti - "Laura Palmer's Theme" (from Twin Peaks)
Bobby "Boris" Pickett - "The Monster Mash" (low-quality MP3)

Whew... okay, that's a lot of tracks. Assuming you haven't had enough already, the 2001 WFMU Halloween mix is unparallelled; a fantastic mix of scary and funny. You can also download an expurgated audio performance of Dracula, featuring voice work by Orson Welles, at paul's ramblings.

Paraskevidekatriaphobia, or How I Stopped Worrying and Learned to Love an Undead Homicidal Hockey Enthusiast

Paraskevidekatriaphobia is the fear of Friday the 13th. It is not to be confused with triskaidekaphobia, which is the fear of the number 13 itself. (Check out the Wikipedia entry on "Black Friday" for some genuinely fascinating stuff, including a chart of upcoming occurrences.) Fear of Friday the 13th seems a little retarded, but fear of Friday the 13th makes perfect, rational sense... because those movies rule most excellently. Okay, some of them do. As October is always Halloween month here at *bitter defeat*, and as we won't have another October Black Friday until 2017, it seems the perfect time to say a few words about one of America's favorite indestructable homicidal maniacs, Jason Voorhees. Sure, last year marked the franchise's 25th anniversary(!), but this is...um... spookier. More seasonally appropriate, if you will. Besides, hockey season just started.


Here are some fun facts:

1. If you count Freddy Vs. Jason, and you should, there have been eleven F13 films.

2. Jason's trademark hockey mask has been the primary design element in the official movie posters since chapter IV (the now-ironically subtitled The Final Chapter).

3. Jason is NOT the killer in two of the films. As everyone knows (or at least everyone who's seen Scream), his mother was the killer in the original film. But after his "death" at the hands of a bald and disgruntled Corey Feldman in Chapter IV, Jason remained buried for one entire film. In Chapter V, A New Beginning, the mask is actually worn by an unhinged and deeply pissed off ambulance driver named Roy. Needless to say, it's the worst installment.

4. The original film (which was made for some $700,000) continued to reign as the highest-grossing installment ($39,754,601 in box office receipts) until it was dethroned in 2003 by Freddy Vs. Jason, which ended up with a worldwide gross of $114,190,748.

5. Eight different actors have played Jason, but Kane Hodder, who donned the mask in chapters VII-X, is considered by most to be the definitive goalie from hell. Hodder is also the only actor to reprise the role. A dude named Warrington Gillette played Jason in Chapter II. That's just an awesome name.

6. Notable F13 cast members include Kevin Bacon (I), Corey Feldman (IV, V), Crispin Glover (IV), Erin Grey (of Buck Rogers and Silver Spoons fame) (IX), Destiny's Child's Kelly Rowland (Freddy Vs. Jason), and, shockingly, genius director David Cronenberg (X).


See? Weren't those facts fun?

Not that you asked, but my personal favorite is definitely Friday the 13th Part VI: Jason Lives. Other fine additions to the F13 canon include Friday the 13th (duh), Friday the 13th Part 3 (in 3-D!!), Friday the 13th: The Final Chapter (probably the second-best), Jason Goes To Hell: The Final Friday, and the surprisingly entertaining Freddy vs. Jason.

So do yourself a favor and visit Camp Crystal Lake this Halloween season. Michael Myers tends to hog the spotlight during this time of year, so share the mass-murderer love on this special day.

The Monday Mixtape

Sure, he brought disease and degradation to the indigenous people of the New World, but you have to love ol' Chris Columbus when you get a three-day weekend out of his exploits. And every New Yorker named Sal or Tony gets a parade to boot! Besides, he did a great job directing Home Alone and Adventures in Babysitting.

Anyway, another new tradition is born today. The *bitter defeat* Monday Mixtape! Why? Wrong question, dear friend. The right question is, "Why the heck not?" In honor of the three-day weekend and New York's unseasonably beautiful weather, the mood of today's installment is "raucous." Enjoy. And if you're at work... take a quick rock-out break on the management!

Chromeo - "Mercury Tears"
Ghostface Killa - "Charlie Brown"
The Minutemen - "Joe McCarthy's Ghost"
? and the Mysterians - "96 Tears"
The Fall - "Mother Sister"
Sonic Youth - "Ca Plane Pour Moi" (Plastic Betrand cover)
The Coke Dares - "Acid Church Party"
Bad Brains - "Pay to Cum"
Babyshambles - "Arebours"
Pink Floyd - "Bike"
Deerhoof - "This Magnificent Bird Will Rise"
Gleaming Spires - "Are You Ready for the Sex Girls?"
Leonard Nimoy - "I Walk the Line" (Johnny Cash cover)
Billy Bragg - "The Milkman of Human Kindness"
Dramarama - "Anything Anything"

Rather than offer interesting notes and pithy insights on the above, I shall simply refer you to www.allmusic.com, where all your questions will be answered. Why all the laziness? Perhaps you weren't paying attention... THREE-DAY WEEKEND, BITCHES!

Ladies and Gentlemen, We Are Floating in Space

Before the nerd levels spiral out of control, the management is proud to announce that *bitter defeat*, after crawling out of the primordial blog soup some two-and-one-half years ago, has finally developed opposable thumbs and started to walk upright. What this strained metaphor is trying to say is this: As an occasional music blog, *bitter defeat* has been way behind the times in terms of making mp3s readily available to visitors...until now. *bitter defeat* has graduated into the murky, semi-legal world of mp3 blogs. Abandon hope all ye who enter here.

In that spirit, Sprites's "I Started a Blog Nobody Read" seems the perfect inaugural track. The title pretty much says it all.

Sprites - "I Started a Blog Nobody Read" [mp3]
[Buy it from Darla Records]

And now back to the nerd spiral...

Tomorrow night is the season premiere of Battlestar Galactica. That I should be excited about this comes as little surprise. I am a nerd. However, this will be the first time that I have ever curtailed my Friday-night drinking schedule in the name of sci-fi. The show is simply that good. In honor of aliens and spaceships and Frito-stained, breakfast-burrito-eating, still-living-with-mom nerds everywhere, the management presents... A SMALL SELECTION OF NERD-APPROPRIATE MUSIC:

Peter Schilling - "Major Tom" [mp3]

Mogwai - "New Paths to Helicon, Pt. 2" [mp3]

Tina Turner - "We Don't Need Another Hero" (From Mad Max: Beyond Thunderdome) [mp3]
[Buy All the Best]

And in honor of the November 2 premiere of The OC (because, in addition to being a nerd, I am also apparently a teenaged girl)...

Phantom Planet - "California" [mp3]
[Buy Music from The OC Volume One]

So there you have it. It's a whole new game now, folks. The esotericism is about to fly off the chain around here. Get ready to right-click until your fingers fall off and you get carpal tunnel syndrome all the way up to your face.

Doug Martsch, Defensive Specialist

You think Ron Artest and Bruce Bowen are tough defenders? Well hippied-out Built to Spill frontman (and journeyman small forward) Doug Martsch will deny you the lane again and again if you dare step to him one-on-one. Just try playing Built to Spill Jams. Doug also blew my mind last night at Brooklyn's finest rock venue/pierogi restaurant, Warsaw. Between the early-autumn head cold and the Zywiec, my brain was putty in his Fender-bending hands. (Thanks to Kim T.A.G. for keeping me semi-conscious.) A bit of preaching-to-the-choir liberal self-righteousness aside, the show was fantastic. Space-freak guitar solos abounded, and set-closer "Carry the Zero" nearly brought the house down. Other highlights included a continuous slide show featuring cute and bizarre art (including a lot of stuff by You in Reverse cover artist Mike Scheer... Not Maurice fucking Sendak, stupid guy standing next to us); a kickass version of "Goin' Against Your Mind," and a feedback-drenched, face-melting "Randy Described Eternity" encore... which, admittedly, I couldn't make it all the way through. We could still hear the geetars squawkin' behind us as we walked on home.

Anyway, Mike nabbed a bunch of good pix, and they're up at his AOL Indie Music Blog post.

Speaking of beer-induced fugue states, this is potentially disastrous news. Dedicated beer drinkers may be forced to resort to THIS:


Finally, ASTRO-BOY is a man-whore!! [Thanks Caleb]

You Snooze, You Lose

I was going to tell you all about Friday night's Sufjan Stevens show at Town Hall. But Stereogum beat me to it. I got nuthin'.

Built to Spill tomorrow night (and Thursday night). Maybe I'll, like, take some pictures or something. Or not. Maybe something other than concert reviews will reappear on this site. Or not.